http://www.nuguru.com - website opinion

Is it that bad?

It's just the season to be jolly. No room for negative feedback

Thanks silly,

its been a while since I have done work for others, more programmer than designer, thats why asked for feedback before I updated, redesigned nuguru.

thanks very useful.

D

Just as a small comment, I see you alternate the background image on the front page. One of them looks like a huge lump of cheese. Really distracts my attention from anything else on the page.

LOL Champagne.

Total redesign on the cards I think!

Thanks again

D

Best of luck. I can offer some help if you need it along the way.

Cheers Tom,

gonna have a blast later, do a mock up for the nav then bounce,
I have an idea in my head.

After that just adding some flash inserts, and making the news etc dynamic.

Thanks Again.

D

Duane, do you say that based on having no idea of what's offered, or saying that as you expect to see prices on a website that offers a service?

Guilty as charged. It all depends what you want to achieve. I've never gained a customer via e-mail and therefore want people to call. If I put a price on the website, it would undoubtedly be higher than 90% of the quotes they receive (depending how far they search and what type of company they're looking for), so I'd lose out because price would be their only interest rather than value and what we can achieve for them.

I certainly see your point. It really annoyed me when setting up when wanting to hire people, but I don't have a problem with calling now. No one can force me into paying them after 1 call. I also feel that you're less likely to waste someone's time when you get to know them, which is another benefit of having more people contact you. It's not always the case, but certainly an improvement over simple e-mail communication.

Just comes down to a calculated risk. I might give it a go later next year and stick a base price on the website to see the results.

Interesting,

OK first, two votes on the champagne bubbles being cheese, so that may be on its way to the bin.

2nd, I see where your working from Duane, and your site made sense to me, pricing per gig etc etc.

Thing is most non IT focused companies don't understand this, demonstarted in other threads even in the short time Ive been on here (sms solution springs to mind).

Hosting is easy to price, and a menu for tangable services makes sense.
I offer solutions from £1 a month to £1000+ a month for clients, but the real service I offer in hosting is the knowledge to what they need.

This is the knub of it, the skills of extracting the requirements from a client are nearly as important as fulfilling them.

So in line with Toms mentality, quoting for solutions is nearly impossible because the potential customer does not know what they need to be quoted for.

An example I was recently approached to develop a 'bespoke' shopping solution for a client who retailed clothing goods on a global stage. To date they had run their business with a here is our new stock email and fax ordering. They had been on the web and had a quote / pricelist for ecommerce solution of $695 (off the shelf with a bit of customisation).

It took a while before they realised how damaging this would have been for the potential of their brand online. An hours chat, for free, running into marketing, levergaing existing customers, etc etc led them to spend more (with someone else I add), but I did get rewarded with a subsequent contract (guess they were crap).

The moral, as an example I guess is that if I had said 'web conceptualization £500 an hour to this client they would never even have bought me the latte they did, but the fact that we enetered into conversation probably saved them thousands would have made that £500 seem a bargain.

On this front I still feel that quoting a per page or a 5 page site price is not the way I wish to do business (its one of the reasons I stopped developing for clients 5 years ago). I would rather, and am aiming to get across the message that I can and will make you suceed, without getting your pants pulled down on price, or buying a rehashed template site.

Thanks for the input, and I will look at adding a menu for the more tangeable services we offer.

D

Duane,

I like the way you have done the bandwidth stuff, as this is the root of many souring of hosting agreement relationships, at all levels.

Good work fella.

I used to host with one 'world class' data centre, had some issues where a supplied dedictaed machine was hacked as they prevented kernel level security admin. Huge bandwidth before they spotted, 6 month argument to get sorted. The result, I walked out with 20K a months worth of my own and clients hosting revenue. Its funny because they thought I only spent a couple of ton a month with them, my clients trust me that much.

D